Drake Wants to Bring People Together With His Music

With two critically and commercially successful albums under his belt and midway through a gig headlining the hottest hip hop tour in the country, Drake recently took some time to reflect on his progress as an artist and where he hopes to go from here. In a recent interview with MTV News, the 25-year-old star said he was more confident than ever in himself and his music.

"I feel like with every project we do there's growth and with every project I do, I become more comfortable with the artist I am," Drake told Sway Calloway backstage at a recent stop on his Club Paradise tour. "Take Care solidified a lot of things for me. [It's] a list of things that would probably be too immense to go through, but it solidified a lot of things and let me know what I want to do, and who I want to be."

The Toronto native said he and his team have become immune to critics who insist that he should take his music in one direction or the other.

“The music that I make is bigger than the box that people try to put us all in as rappers,” he said. “And people always try and draw me back like ‘Nah, just rap.’ Nah, I’m good. I like what I do. No one can do what I do...period. That’s how I feel. Nobody can really do what I do, what we do, including 40 and all the producers that I work with.”

Going forward Drake said that he hopes to continue on the musical path he's set for himself but to get "way better." He went on to reference the era of Bob Marley and artists who made their mark on the world with protest songs, saying he hoped to impact the current era with his own approach.

"There's nothing necessarily for me to step up and say I want to fight for, but there is a way for me to give moments to the world, and to bear my emotions and hope that I'm remembered as that guy who was able to bring people together," he said. "I want to be that guy. I want to bring people together."

The Club Paradise Tour, which began in February, has maintained a star-studded cast of hip hop up-and-comers that has included J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, Meek Mill,French Montana, 2 Chainz and Waka Flocka Flame. The tour ends tomorrow, June 20, in North Carolina.

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